Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-google-and-that-should-worry-us-all/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wow! if this is true.

"A person claiming to be a former Edge developer has today described one such action. For no obvious reason, Google changed YouTube to add a hidden, empty HTML element that overlaid each video. This element disabled Edge's fastest, most efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. It hurt Edge's battery- life performance and took it below Chrome's. The change didn't improve Chrome's performance and didn't appear to serve any real purpose; it just hurt Edge, allowing Google to claim that Chrome's battery life was actually superior to Edge's. Microsoft asked Google if the company could remove the element, to no avail."

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this edge developer's moral indignation also extends to the repeated aggressive "move to edge" tactics. I'm sitting on my windows 10 laptop, where we went from "hey i can switch my browser at will" to "hey we buried it", and then also "when you try switch, it tries to convince you to stay with edge in the hopes you will get tired of trying to switch the defaults".

But that's not enough, apparently, so it was also "when you browse with chrome or firefox, we give you notifications saying you are draining your battery faster and should move to edge"[1]. This predates the stuff talked about in this article.

That's also like the _start_ of these tactics. I'm sure Google and Mozilla asked Microsoft to stop doing that, "to no avail". Meanwhile, the complaint here is basically "they made our annoying and stupid notification not true". Having dealt with these tactics repeatedly, i can't work up any indignation over this. The only one i feel even mildly sorry for is Mozilla.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12369326/microsoft- windows...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12369326/microsoft- windows-10-chrome-battery-life-notifications)

<comment><USER3> Wait a guy who works for a company that uses the world's most popular website (the google search homepage) to aggressively proselytize it's own browser is complaining about Windows prompting you to use Edge? For real dude?

Edit: I'll expand. You work for a company the bundled Chrome as a default install with many other toolbars and utility programs. You sell a line of computing products where Chrome is not only the default, it is _literally_ the only browser than can be installed. Chrome is the default browser on the world's most popular OS (Android). Multiple Google properties have refused to work on other browsers and displayed a popup asking people to switch the Chrome (Inbox is the one I remember most vividly). Here's a link to people trying to figure out how to get Chrome to stop asking to be default every time it opens: [https://www.tenforums.com/browsers-email/59843-how-stop- goog...](https://www.tenforums.com/browsers-email/59843-how-stop-google- chrome-not-your-default-browser-message.html) As you can see it's not exactly an easy task. All of this, and probably more, and you're here talking about what Windows does? C'mon man.

<comment><USER2> I am so unbelievably tired of the hacker news "you work for company x and therefore your opinion is tainted and you aren't allowed to have personal opinions" crap I don't even know where to begin. It's just another form of worthless bias being used to dismiss arguments.

It's no different than any other form of bias, even if it seems more socially acceptable here.

If you want to argue with what I actually wrote, happy to have that discussion. Otherwise, not interested, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article has some good points, but I don't agree with it's treatment of the SPDY->HTTP/2 and QUIC->HTTP/3 process. In both cases, Google engineers identified a real problem, made a prototype solution, encouraged others to implement it, and ultimately participated as core members of standardizing what is in some sense a "v2" protocol built on the lessons of their initial experiments. The article presents the working group as fighting to de-Googlify the protocols, but the reality seems to be that Google was working closely as members of that committee, and the new versions were intended to be better for everyone.

The monopolistic action would be to design a new protocol then keep it proprietary and secret so your competition can't have services or browsers that are as fast. That's not what happened.

</comment><comment><USER5> The whole article seems to have been motivated by the ex-MSFT engineer's comment, padded with some false impressions on how standards involve.

HTTP2 and HTTP3 are decided by committees and it isnt Google who controls it.

While I dont know whether the MSFT engineer's claims are true or not, but even with some benefit of the doubt, having an empty <div> cause such an obvious performance degradation sounds to be like hyper optimized for an implementation rather than actual breakthrough.

<comment><USER6> > HTTP2 and HTTP3 are decided by committees and it isnt Google who controls > it.

That was then, this is now. What happens when Google implements its next protocol in Chromium? With Blink's market share, would they even bother with committees anymore? At this point, they could more or less get what they want out of it without the extra bureaucracy.

<comment><USER7> > What happens when Google implements its next protocol in Chromium? With > Blink's market share, would they even bother with committees anymore?

They didn't bother for SPDY or QUIC. They were implemented in the browser, like many others features, before any committee. It's the committees though that decided to base their works for HTTP/2 and HTTP3 over theses.

The danger isn't on what they implements, because that's already something they do (and all others browsers do), but based on what they DON'T implements. What if they ignore HTTP3 and only use a new protocol they made?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The absolute worst part is their random bans for ludicrous reasons. Resold pixel? Ban! Art nudity? Ban! Hollywood photos in app screenshots? Ban! YouTube reports? Ban!

And the ban hammer deletes everything from Gmail to Google docs to Google drive.

There is no other company that I despise as much as Google. Not even Facebook. FB had a customer support call me when my account was blocked due to invalid credit card in ads. Amazon has excellent customer support for buyers and sellers.

Google just deletes everything and doesn't even bother providing any support for it.

The day Google dies, I will be opening up a champagne and celebrating.

<comment><USER9> lol'd at FB customer support. sometime in late 2017 someone with a Pakistan IP has somehow made 2 pages about flowers on my FB account, created an ad account and ran 2 ad campaigns on them.

weirdly enough they paid for the first campaign, but removed their card details afterwards.

FB nags me on my wall to update my credit card info for a failed payment of ~20$, a year after I wrote two emails to them explaining the situation.

<comment><USER8> You can just close your fb account and move on with your life. Good luck doing that with google and its drive/docs/gmail/search/apps/phone/maps/contact manager/chrome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure I agree with some of the conclusions. Webkit/Blink are open source, as long as MS contributes back, I really don't see the problem. Anyone can fork, experiment, enhance etc.

When I've tested under Edge, specifically, stuff that _should_ work often didn't. It got better each release, but the pace was almost as painfully slow as IE was before it.

<comment><USER11> I think people attribute too much to Chromium's open source nature.

The repository is controlled by Google, it's their project. Whatever Google wants in Chromium goes in.

The only path forward in a case in which Microsoft disagrees would be a fork. However a fork would do nothing to Chrome's market share. Microsoft failed to gain any traction with Edge and that won't change after they start building on Chromium.

This is also similar with Android, an ecosystem that Google managed to control even if there's a lot of incentive for the phone makers to fork. The reality being that no fork would succeed for as long as Google is pumping money into the project, because it benefits from the network effects of their app store and of their flagship apps.

This is why open standards are important, with open source being in fact an orthogonal issue.

<comment><USER10> I'm not against open standards... however, when Google was having issues with Apple in terms of priorities, that's when they forked off... if MS has the same issues, they can do the same. In the end, there can still be standards, and I understand that if it hits like 75% market share overall that it becomes a defacto standard. I saw it with IE6, and it was painful after a while.

However, I don't think Blink will stop getting better just because MS starts using it, or Google stops. Worst case, we see a fork. Also, now Edge can at least be available outside windows. I do think the biggest mistakes MS made are as follows.

        - Tethering Edge releases to Windows Updates.
        - Renaming IE to Edge instead of updating and hiding old ie better
        - Making it Windows 10 only

Those were the worst mistakes that MS made, and to the last one, at least they made updating to win10 free for a couple years. I also, despite reporting, don't think the front end will resemble Chromium so much, I do think they will take some of their own UX lessons and tweak the front end while keeping the Blink engine in place. Also, swapping a lot of the synching services for MS equivalents, while keeping plugin compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title implies that we should have handled the Web over to another company. We should not, to any company.

</comment><comment><USER13> The Google of ten years ago was the company we should have trusted the internet.

The Google of today has essentially removed the founders and become a search for profit. Once they split the company 'for accounting purposes' it meant the google part of alphabet was going to be run for increasing profit almost exclusively, which mean just what we are seeing now.

<comment><USER14> The google of old is gone. They operate at a scale and against competitors that are completely ruthless. It's not just profit. It's winning. Beating the competitor. Emphasis on "beating".

This is what most corporations at scale actually do and what they are. Constant battle in a hostile environment.

Google/alphabet is likely under threat of anti-trust and a whole host of other legal actions, eg possible pending monopoly charges, and likely criminal charges in multiple ways where they bent a rule for whatever reason. Lawsuits for other reasons we don't even know about. Lots of other speculative actions pending or in progress. Who knows what else. This is all part of the legal framework. An allegation is created and tested to see if could stick. If it can it gets thrown at the target.

Every other corporation at that scale is fighting these kind of battles every day. I'd actually be surprised if they weren't.

For those who think I'm talking only about google, you can substitute Facebook, J&J or any other large corporation across any industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this linked to @JoshuaJB comment here on HN?

comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824)

</comment><comment><USER16> The company doesn't matter. The same people would infiltrate and subvert regardless of company. The web is too important for it to be any other way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why don't people push Microsoft to open source Edge?

<comment><USER18> [https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/micro...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/microsoft- edge-making-the-web-better-through-more-open-source-collaboration/)

they did. Microsoft already dropped EdgeHTML & announced they'll be using Chromium under the hood, although maybe the author didn't know or forgot to mention that here..

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google, Was dont be evil... Now, Dont get caught

<comment><USER20> "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

[https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/absolute-power- corrupts-...](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/absolute-power-corrupts- absolutely.html)

<comment><USER21> Right on</comment></comment></comment>


Jjot - take notes online, fast. - <AUTHOR> http://jjot.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey, glad to find this here. I was just about to post it.

This is my startup; I'm working with one other guy full time on it. We applied to ycombinator, got the in-person interview, but didn't make the summer program. You can't win them all.

I made this because I felt there's really no simple & fast way to take down short notes (meeting/class notes, todos, brainstorming, random links) online. I don't know about you, but I've been using Gmail drafts, writely, and 37signals stuff for some time and it's not really designed for this use case. I find myself thinking "just show me my notes -- don't make me click on a link to see each one" when I use products like Gmail drafts.

So here's our stab at this market. It follows the same design philosophy I try to use everywhere -- simple, lean, focused. If you've ever watched a casual computer user flounder when trying a new web2.0 app, you'll know the value of being brutally straight-forward and obvious. Jjot is obvious: you've got a bunch of boxes that look like paper notes, and you can type in them. There's a lot more to it, but that's the gist.

We launched recently and the reception has been pretty good. We were on delicious popular over the weekend, and were (inexplicably) moved from that list to web2.0 popular- <http://del.icio.us/popular/web2.0>

There's been a few posts about Jjot on the web, including one from lifehacker. Now that we've got a few users to get feedback from and improve the service, we can really work on getting some more traction. Running a service with users is 5x as fun as the building stage. All of a sudden, a lot of people care about and take notice of each change you make.

I'd love to hear any comments/ideas/criticisms; news.yc always has good product feedback. If anyone is curious as to how this thing is built (it uses some fancy client-side coding), I'd be happy to talk about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice app, but I already use something similar: stickit.com. How is this different from stikkit?

<comment><USER2> stikkit is cool, but doesn't quite hit the nail we're aiming for. It turns out to be another wiki product, similar to BaseCamp, while Jjot is a light-weight WYSIWYG notes application. Try playing with Jjot for a few minutes to see what I mean. An example:

To edit one of my notes on Stikkit, I have to

\- scan through the titles of my notes

\- guess which one contains the info I need, click it, (hit back and click again if I'm wrong)

\- find a small "edit" button somewhere on the page

\- wait for the page to reload

\- enter some text using some markup language

\- hit save

With Jjot:

\- scan the contents of my notes (they're all on the same page, fully editable)

\- Edit the one I'm looking for, using a visual editor

That's it. No save buttons to worry about, no markup language (Jjot uses a rich text editor), and everything is on the same page. It really is sticky notes on the web.

I think Stikkit is a promising product, but I wouldn't say it meets the same needs as Jjot. If I wanted something heavier than Jjot, I might consider Stikkit, BaseCamp, or maybe an online word processor like writewith.

I also find it mildly annoying that they label my contacts "peeps," but to each his own.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reply. I definitely like the easier to use aspect of jjot, but to make it really convenient (and win me over), it would be nice to have a dashboard widget for OSX that would let me see my notes in the dashboard, but save them on the web to be able to edit/access them at e.g. work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found a bug:

To save your notes permanently, sign up for an account.

</comment><comment><USER5> cool! this (almost exactly this!) was on my list of possible ideas to pursue a few months back. great to see that it's being done.</comment>


Git-flow with a GUI - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-with-sourcetree-and-git-flow/

<comment><USER3> I've been using SourceTree as my main Git gui for a while and was ecstatic when they added this. It works really well.

<comment><USER4> I agree, SourceTree is very nice. Personally, I prefer the command line (with bash bindings like gc for git commit) but I use SourceTree for visualisation which I find much nicer than the one git, github or bitbucket (also Atlassian) offer.

To bad it only supports OS X. Many of my co-developers use Windows or Linux and would definitely like this tool.

<comment><USER5> I'm in the same boat, love the command line for branch/merge, but day to day using Ubuntu/Windows XP - so I find SmartGIT the best choice here - <USER2> nice for visualisation of the commit log/diffs/etc.

<comment><USER4> Thanks a bunch! I wasn't aware of SmartGIT. Already send it out to my co- workers. Let's see how they like it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Newspaper economics: online and offline - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/newspaper-economics-online-and-offline.html <comment><USER2> Here's an excellent article on the death of the Rocky Mountain News: http://www.johntemple.net/2009/09/lessons-from-rocky-mountain- news-text.html);

The lessons mentioned in the article are easily applicable to any newspapers out there.

Newspapers need to find a new business model fast, to survive n the new competitive environment.

Experimentation is the way to go, as mentioned. It's all about trying, trying fast enough in hope to hit the jackpot.

While tablets might seem like the popular thing right now, they are just about distribution - getting content to people. That doesn't change the way how people will want to part their money.

Let me end with two quotes from Albert Einstein which I think are applicable here:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them."

</comment><comment><USER3> Part of the problem or part of the solution?

Newspaper owners and managers are kidding themselves if they think they can force the world back 10 years. Either get on board with new business models or face the consequences. You can't put the internet back in a box.

Perhaps the future of news is BBC type journalism, where everyone pays a news tax (called licence fee in the UK) and the government pays journalists to follow the stories. With the right indepedence from the politicians, these journalists can generate the news, and sites can take these feeds for low cost. I'm normally against government ownership of anything, but if newspapers can't be profitable enough to generate news that doesn't pay, then someone is going to have to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> They do that in Italy too, and it's pretty much a complete waste of my money.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is by Hal Varian - he's one of those people where I'm happy to read pretty much anything he writes.</comment>


Overview of Text Editors for Programmers on Linux - <AUTHOR> http://blog.poapfel.net/archives/05-11-12/text_editors_linux.html

<comment><USER2> I prefer sublime text 2 even if it's still in beta it is sooooo great, I really love it. ;-)

<comment><USER3> I tired it once but It crashed all the time... -_-

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Emacs FTW!</comment>


Richest 1% Now Wealthier Than the Rest of the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-18/richest-1-now-wealthier-than-the-rest-of-the-world-oxfam-says <comment><USER2> can this trend continue as the stock markets around the world continue their decline? It seems the really smart money already pulled out of the market, so the richest few could actually pull out MORE ahead as the rest of the rich lose money.</comment>


Postgres 11 – A First Look - <AUTHOR> http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2018/09/20/postgresql-11-a-first-look/ <comment><USER3> > Fear column addition no more

This section was really surprising to read! I use the strong_migrations [1] gem to catch "NOT NULL column with a default value", because it's such a common mistake.

I guess I had assumed that this was just something we had to accept, based on decades of architecture decisions, and the way that Postgres was written. It never occurred to me that it was actually possible to change the default behavior of Postgres and fix the underlying issue.

[1] [https://github.com/ankane/strong_migrations#adding-a- column-...](https://github.com/ankane/strong_migrations#adding-a-column-with- a-default-value)

<comment><USER4> This feature has me way more excited than I probably should be. Been splitting up relatively simple schema migrations into multiple steps for years now, and definitely welcoming this change.

<comment><USER5> Notably, that feature got written by somebody from Salesforce (I assume on their work time, but not sure), and finished up by a Postgres major contributor. It might be the first major contribution from Salesforce outside of all the stuff Tom Lane did when he was working there.

<comment><USER6> Not so. I worked on UPSERT for several years as a Salesforce employee, as well as quite a number of other things. I worked for Heroku, a Salesforce business unit, from 2013-2017.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Now you can quit Postgres by simply typing quit or exit. Previously you had > to use Ctrl + D or \q

While this is good to help out beginners a bit, people should really learn Ctrl + D. It works practically everywhere and saves tons of time guessing/remembering and even typing the correct incantation for the program you want to exit.

<comment><USER8> What other apps use Ctrl+D ? I can't think of a single one.

<comment><USER9> Practically any interactive shell. python or bash for instance. It's everywhere.

<comment><USER10> Except Powershell. :(

<comment><USER11> It does on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A million things like this are why PostgreSQL is the only relational database I consider for, well, pretty much anything. Their approach of "build it safe and then make it fast" has been paying off in spades for a couple of decades now. Thanks for everything you do, psql maintainers!

<comment><USER13> 100% naive question: why is mysql and their similars so popular then?

Spanner and AWS Aurora base off of more mysql than postregsql from what I can tell. Why?

<comment><USER14> > Why?

Notice that parallel to MySQL's rise a particular loosely-typed, never-except, often-wrong programming language also became popular. To this day I feed my family with that language.

The typical coder (not that I do not say "developer") who codes in PHP does not care about correctness. He does not understand why monetary values cannot be stored in floats, he does not know what bitwise manipulation is, he does not know the difference between character encodings. What does he care what MySQL does, he knows that he can put strings in if he calls them VARCHAR, and he can pull the right one out with a WHERE. He cares not enough to check that user bios fit in his VARCHAR, and when he learns to JOIN he does not understand which constraints to put in the ON clause.

I do have nicer words for the L and A in the stack.

<comment><USER15> In fairness, some of this is historical baggage that MySQL got stuck with from it's early popularity.

mSQL was a free/low cost SQL database in the early 90s. Originally it was an SQL translator built on top of Postgres (that used POSTQUEL). That was too slow (because Postgres had higher system requirements), so a new lightweight engine was developed for it.. and that's what later became MySQL. The point was a lightweight SQL database that ran well on cheap early-90s computers.

The compromises to make mSQL fast were inherited by MySQL, and they can't be easily changed without breaking the ecosystem that was developed around mSQL/MySQL.

Postgres on the other hand, was a university project in the 80s and 90s being developed on mainframes. It was always a slow moving, cautious project. Yes, it didn't make the compromises mSQL made, because it didn't have to. It used more memory, more CPU, but was more correct/safe than MySQL.

That was the same reason it lost in the 90s. mSQL was out being used by websites and other projects on cheap computers. Postgres was mostly waiting for computer tech to get fast enough so they wouldn't need to compromise their code too much to take it off the mainframe an on to cheaper computers. Postgres only adopted SQL in response to mSQL's popularity. Early Postgres was also harder to setup, another point that wasn't addressed until after mSQL took off.

MySQL was popular because of the compromises they made. If mSQL just kept Postgres as the engine, MySQL never would have existed. And if they instead waited (even a couple of years), and did things correctly, they wouldn't have beat Postgres -- which had a decade lead in development and was more advanced than mSQL/MySQL.

<comment><USER16> > The compromises to make mSQL fast were inherited by MySQL, and they can't be > easily changed without breaking the ecosystem that was developed around > mSQL/MySQL.

This doesn't sound accurate to me. Which compromises are you referring to?

Historically, MySQL's major source of criticism related to leniency of type safety / automatic data conversion -- which is unrelated to performance. It's also essentially a solved problem with the advent of strict sql_mode. MySQL made this the default in 2015, but it has been available (and recommended as a best practice) since 2004.

Performance in MySQL, as a general topic, greatly depends on the storage engine. Relative to Postgres, MySQL's pluggable storage engine API is both a blessing and a curse -- it permits use of alternative engines that perform significantly better for specific workloads, at the cost of substantial administrative complexity.

Performance-wise, Postgres generally has the lead for things like number of supported index types, join strategies, query planning for very large queries (and OLAP workloads in general). These may or may not matter for you, depending on your workload.

<comment><USER17> The main selling point of MySQL at the earlier 2000's was that it used an in- memory storage with only opportunistic disk writes. That made for an incredibly fast database, with obvious downsides that many people refused to notice.

<comment><USER16> What storage engine are you referring to? I've been using MySQL since the earlier 2000s, and your description doesn't match MyISAM (which uses the filesystem cache for data blocks, only using its own caching for indexes) nor InnoDB.

MyISAM does offer amazing write performance, at the cost of not being crash- safe. But given its reliance on the fs cache, it would be unusual to describe it as "in-memory storage". Anyway, the GP was talking about compromises that "can't be easily changed without breaking the ecosystem", which doesn't describe MyISAM either -- MyISAM is basically deprecated in modern MySQL deployments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you pg maintainers, you've made such a wonderful thing.

<comment><USER19> It really is incredible how we can get something as fundamental as a database for free that is so well made and production ready. Can you imagine if there was no postgres? We'd have to use mysql or oracle or _gasp_ mssql.

<comment><USER20> If MSSQL wasn't tied to the Microsoft ecosystem, I don't think it would get such a bad rap - When I was a dev on the Microsoft product stack I found MSSQL quite a joy to use - reasonably fast, pretty powerful admin tools (SSMS) and pretty easy to interface with as long as you stayed within the MS ecosystem. I did find myself missing SSMS specifically when I moved to non MS stack development, since Postgres' 'official' open source options aren't nearly as robust. There are a few proprietary tools that can rival SSMS for Postgres, but then you are back into the realm of proprietariness.

<comment><USER21> MSSQL runs on Linux now. There's even a docker image. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server- linux-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux- setup?view=sql-server-2017)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have a serious problem with Postgres. Every year at FOSDEM, some of the most technically interesting talks are about Postgres, and the room is always far too small so I can't get in.

<comment><USER23> The AW block is tiny but has so many great talks. All the queues end up merging with each other and jutting out into the foyer. Chaos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One thing the OP didn't mention is that the JIT is not enabled by default. They found that it has performance improvements for only long and complex queries yet. [1] But it can be enabled by a simple configuration command: jit = on.

[1]: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PostgreS...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PostgreSQL- JIT-No-11-Default)

<comment><USER25> It's expected to only have benefits for longer queries. The problem is primarily that the current logic what is likely to be a long query isn't perfect, so can trigger in the wrong moments. Since integrating the feature we'd added an item in the "pre-release item list" [1], to decide whether to enable/disable - but we definitely wanted it enabled during most of the beta test period. This wasn't really a last-minute "whaaaaaaa" thing...

[1] [https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_11_Open_Items](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_11_Open_Items)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm already loving PG10's native partitioning support. PG11 closes the loop on a few convenience features like being able to set foreign and primary keys at the master table level. With PG10 I can't use ON CONFLICT clauses - <USER2> forward to upgrading and sorting that out.

<comment><USER27> I encountered the same limitations as you while implementing partitioning a few months ago and it's possible to use ON CONFLICT if the unique index is set on the partitioned table.

So after initialising a new partition, I also create a unique index attached to that partition directly instead of the parent table.

<comment><USER26> wow thanks, I never thought to try it, just dismissed it and never dig further. I'll try this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm excited for hash partitioning. Being able to partition on a uuid is going to be very useful.

</comment><comment><USER29> I love Postgres, but the only thing I find myself wishing for was better Unicode support in the regex engine. I like to add strong database constraints, and sometimes lean on the regexp engine but I find it's missing a lot of features available in other regexp engines. PCRE compatibility would be ideal, but even just support for the Unicode \p classes would be a big step up.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love PG. heaps better than the alternatives, for many reasons. My main one, is native IPv6 object support.

I found the migration from 9.x to 10.x deeply painful, I think the one-time cost of the dump-restore cycle hurt me far more than I expected. I very much hope the transition to 11 can be done more expeditiously.

<comment><USER31> Have you tried pg_upgrade?

<comment><USER30> Yes. I still don't understand why it failed. It gave me a huge list of locale related reasons it felt unhappy, and since I hadn't selected a locale config option installing either the prior, or the current (9.4 -> 10.x) I felt pretty wierded out.

<comment><USER32> Postgres 9.4.0 was released 2014-12-18

The version convention has changed with v10.0 so it should be trivial to change from 10.x to 11.x . In your position I'd be updating 9.4.x -> 9.5.x -> 9.6.x -> 10.x

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What are some reasons I might consider Postgres over MySQL when choosing a DB platform?

<comment><USER34> With Postgres you don't need MongoDB, InfluxDB, or any other trendy thing, Postgres does it all, and better than all the wannabes.

<comment><USER35> Could you please elaborate how to use Postgres as a time series database (like InfluxDB)?

<comment><USER36> Create a table and have a timestamp for your data? Not sure what you are asking.

On hand we have: 15+ years old mature product that is widely supported and it can be used as a time series database

Other hand: n+1 young database engine with all of the problems that any young data storage engine has (only exception is FoundationDB because those guys actually understood the challenges of writing a reliable data store)

The question is, what can InfluxDB offer over Postgres for storing time series data?

<comment><USER8> Well InfluxDB actually is a time series database. That's all it does.

The query language is optimised for time based queries. The storage is optimised for time series. It is part of the metrics/monitoring ecosystem so it has integrations with tools like Grafana.

PostgreSQL doesn't have any time series capabilities OOTB. It's just people modelling the concept in a relational fashion. No different to how Excel can be used as a time series database.

And seriously everyone should just get over FoundationDB. There are plenty of people who have invented new databases that got it right e.g. Cassandra, HBase, Redis etc.

<comment><USER37> PostgreSQL has excellent time series capabilities. It can load millions of rows per second, efficiently scan by time range, build rollup tables, has expressive SQL with excellent support for time (timezones, ranges, timestamps, intervals, conversion, etc.), it can combine multiple indexes to query large volumes of time series data quickly, it can do sampling, and it can expire data efficiently through partitioning. Ok, it's not entirely ootb. To make it work nicely you may need extensions like pg_partman to automate partitioning and Citus to scale out, but once you do you have a time series database that's faster and more powerful than anything else on the market.

<comment><USER8> Congratulations. You just described the capabilities of ANY SQL database.

But again there are capabilities that exist only in InfluxDB because all it does is time series data. It's not multi-purpose. Which again is why you see it all over the place in the metrics/monitoring ecosystem but you never see PostgreSQL, MySQL etc.

<comment><USER38> Actually you can use PostgreSQL in those with timescaledb plugin. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great looking release. I'm really excited to see if the cstore extension can make good use of the parallelism improvements.

<comment><USER40> It looks like someone would need to do the things described in here: [https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/flat/CA%2Bz6ocRFEnThhX...](https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/flat/CA%2Bz6ocRFEnThhXye3F9_ZjSMDSfOGdnGOt8hnXsVgGmFpNTYFA%40mail.gmail.com)

There is an easy level "parallel safe" that would allow scans of different cstore partitions in a parallel query, and a harder-to-code "parallel aware" level that would allow parallel scans on one individual cstore_fdw relation. AFAIK no FDW has attempted parallel scans yet, but cstore looks like it may be an ideal case to be first?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good Books as an Introduction to Economics? - <AUTHOR> For context, I'm someone who has very sparse knowledge regarding economics. I was hoping to find a good introduction to economics that I can read. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> I found The Economics Anti-Textbook [1] to be a good primer that explains a lot of the foundations you might pick up in an introductory course, but also includes healthy perspective into the field beyond what you might get out of a 101.

[1] [https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-economics-anti- textbo...](https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-economics-anti-textbook/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I read Thinking Strategically – The Competetive Edge in Business Politics & Everyday Reissue many years back. I thought it was a good introduction as it focused on different fields like sports, business, etc, through the lens of economics

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465060730](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465060730)</comment>


BlackRock acquires FutureAdvisor - <AUTHOR> https://www.futureadvisor.com/content/blog/announcement-blackrock-acquires-futureadvisor <comment><USER2> Former FA employee here: They're a great company. Grew about 45x while I was with them. They use BlackRock funds, so BR saw the growth. A pretty good ending for 5 years work. The Financial Times is reporting they sold for $150M-$200M.

<comment><USER3> So I am curious why you left? :)

<comment><USER2> founder's itch. we are all confronted with insurmountable opportunity.

<comment><USER3> True. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> BlackRock is interesting in that they're very forward-looking and conservative at the same time. One of the first to use an AI-like system to support management of huge assets. Also one of the elite firms of the country in terms of just how much capital they manage.

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21591164-getting-15-t...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21591164-getting-15-trillion- assets-single-risk-management-system-huge-achievement)

Will be interesting to see what happens to FutureAdvisor.</comment>


This is how East-Berlin's district Prenzlauer Berg looked like in the 80s - <AUTHOR> http://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/prenzlauer-berg-1980-2016/ <comment><USER2> Nice, but the top foto (Kollwitz- Ecke Belforter Straße) can't possibly be a match, location-wise.

The Sredzkistr lineup doesn't look quite right, either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Somehow past looked better ;)

<comment><USER4> The old photographs are better photographs. More carefully planned, composed, and processed. The new photos are closer to snapshots than art.</comment></comment>


Apple Surveying MacBook Pro Users About Headphone Jack and Other Ports - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/14/apple-macbook-pro-survey/ <comment><USER8> I use the optical digital out from the headphone port about 8 hours a day. It's connected to my audio technical dac/headphone amp.

I'll only be interested in wireless headphones once they actually have decent quality. And even then, I already have very good Beyerdynamic headphones (the T90 and the DT880) and I don't see why I'd spend money to change them.

I'd be rather annoyed at not having hdmi or sd card mostly because carrying dongles is a pain.

It's kind of sad but Apple products just do not excite me anymore. I remember before I used to try and follow the keynote to see the new iphone or I looked forward to seeing the first intel macbook when it was unveiled... Now, I look at the iphone 7 and there's really nothing in it that makes me want to buy it. There hasn't really been anything new with their laptop either (ok, maybe the new small macbook is not bad it's a good travel notebook)...

<comment><USER9> Genuine question, is there any particular reason DAC is connected via optical rather than USB? Or was it because AT's DAC do not have USB support?

I asked this question because I initially thought anyone with an high-end headphones are least likely to be affected if Apple removed headphone port from a Mac (because the included headphone port usually isn't powerful enough to drive some of the high-end models anyway, and many would likely to replace the DAC too, in addition to adding an Amp.)

<comment> UVB-76 Optical just _feels_ like a cleaner interface. USB requires drivers, and introduces timing and electrical interference issues.

USB also feels like overkill for an audio interface. It allows transfer of data in both directions, and introduces security risks if you don't fully trust the DAC you are connecting to, or worse still if the DAC is connected to a network/the Internet.

I'm not suggesting for a moment there is any audible difference between the two, but optical audio has always struck me as a 'cleaner' way to output digital audio.

I would be extremely annoyed if it were removed from the MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER10> > introduces timing

SPDIF also combines the clock and data in a single signal, it has more or less the same issues with jitter that USB does. Not that it matters since I'm not aware of a single proper study that indicates jitter is audible.

<comment><USER11> I would be shocked if there wasn't a hardware fifo in that receiver path.

<comment><USER10> Depends on the device.

Often there is a receiver IC that will perform clock recovery and convert from S/PDIF to an internal digital audio format, I2S most commonly, to send it to a DAC IC. In this simple setup there generally is no more buffering than needed for operation of the pieces.

In more complex situations, either where the S/PDIF signal is being re-clocked or where the data on the S/PDIF line needs to be decoded, then they will be buffering.

To clarify some terms:

Re-clocking - the system detects the clock rate of the signal but does not use that clock as the reference, instead it will generate it's own clock at the proper frequency. Some buffering is needed here to offset drift between the clocks causing sample starvation.

Encoded data - S/PDIF (really AES3 for the most part) has a framed block transmission format not entirely dissimilar to a TCP packet. There is meta- data, frames, sub-frames, etc, it's not just 'pure audio'. Various formats can be stuffed into these data frames, like compressed audio data (5.1 Dolby Digital for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dear Apple,

Here is _my_ list of things your laptop should have:

* A headphone jack that supports the built-in microphone (conferencing, anyone?)

* The magsafe power connector - my kids are rough on stuff, even my stuff.

* USB ports, perhaps at least one of each old and new plug. As many as you can fit on the sides, cuteness be damned.

* an ethernet plug.

* function keys on the keyboard. E.g. - I use F1 and F6 A LOT in Jetbrains IDEA.

Here are things I could live without:

* an SD card reader

* any particular video plug form, as long as I can hook a monitor to _something_ with an inexpensive adapter plug.

* CD/DVD drive - nice to have, but I understand about space and cost.

This is for work, not a fashion show. It's not supposed to be a tablet. I already have an iPad mini, and want something more, a lot more, in my work computer.

<comment><USER13> Sorry to break this news to you: you are not Apple's target market.

I agree about your points, but ask your average consumer when the last time they used a Cat5 Ethernet connection was and you'll probably get a blank stare. Likewise, function keys. Anyone that's not a developer is likely to not even care about them.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't everyone use F5 daily when browsing?

<comment><USER15> What does F5 do?

<comment><USER12> "Reload"/"Refresh" on Windows. As others noted, Command-R on OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think getting rid of the magsafe connector is a much bigger deal.

I love my macbook charger, but it is expensive as hell to replace.

I really like the idea of a universal charger as well. So it seems weird that they are on the front line of the usb-c open standard on laptops, but use an incompatible plug on their phones.

Plug-wise it will make android a better match than iPhone.

<comment><USER17> To me, using the same charger for your phone and a laptop is weird - <USER2> all, your average phone charger will only deliver 10-18W of power, while a macbook charger usually needs 45-65W. So if you use your phone charger on your laptop, it will be too weak to charge it while it's being used(and will take hours and hours to charge from 0% to full), and if you use your laptop charger on the phone it's a massive overkill. My point is - it's all about what the customers expect. If you tell them they can use the same chargers for both phones and laptops, they won't be happy, because their laptops won't perform as expected.

As an anecdote I can offer an example of the Asus Transformer T100, which my mum has, and she constantly complains to me that it actually discharges while she is using it. I go and check, and of course she is using a 1Amp micro usb charger, instead of the 3Amp micro usb charger supplied in the box. Customers can't really be expected to know about this stuff(I mean, they can, but a certain group of them certainly won't).

<comment><USER18> Couldn't you build a charger with high capacity that detects the device and delivers the appropriate output? I can imagine it's not that much more expensive than a standard charger and would be a great selling point.

<comment><USER17> That's not a problem - you can safely charge your phone even with a 100W charger, your phone is smart enough not to draw more power than it needs.

The problem is, that a more powerful charger needs to be physically bigger. 65W Mac charger is definitely a lot bigger and heavier than a 5W iphone charger. So you can't make iphone chargers which are still very small, yet can charge MacBooks when needed.

<comment><USER19> I can charge my Chromebook Pixel 2 with my LG G5 charger. It will take forever to charge fully and will drain faster than I'm using it, but it absolutely works.

This was still infinitely more useful than my SO's Macbook/iPhone combo during the hurricane that knocked out power to my city for about 5 days. (90% lost power for some amount of time while around 20% still didn't have electricity 5 days later, my SO included. I didn't cover the recovery schedule after that.) While I was able to charge my laptop completely on a mobile power bank they was relegated to their phone until we were able to find a hotel with power restored to charge it at. Again, it's not like people will just be able to carry around one cable "to rule them all" but they will have a lot more utility with just the one cable than they used to.

<comment><USER20> > It will take forever to charge fully and will drain faster than I'm using > it, but it absolutely works.

Not sure if you can call this "working", which was gambiting's point.

<comment><USER19> Did you just stop reading the comment after that sentence?

I was able to fully charge my laptop from a power bank using a phone's USB cable while everyone else was relegated to simply using their phones and waiting for power restoration. What is not "working" about that?

<comment><USER17> Well, while I absolutely agree that being able to charge your laptop from a power bank is cool, I still think it's a usability problem - like in my original example, where my mum just doesn't understand how a micro usb charger can charge slower than another micro usb charger. Devices should be seamless, and you shouldn't have to worry about it - if you can charge your laptop with a charger, it should provide enough power to keep using it while it's charging - yet most phone charger will not do that with laptops. Tech savvy people won't have a problem with it, obviously, but a lot of consumers will.

<comment><USER19> I think you're understating how big of a difference there is between a laptop charger and a phone charger. Of course two identical AC adapters for phones are difficult to differentiate; the cables are the same gauge, the bricks are about the same size, they both came with phones.

I'm not sure your mother would have as much difficulty differentiating something the size of a laptop charger from something the size of a phone charger... It's not like laptops are going to start shipping with phone-sized chargers all of a sudden.

<comment><USER17> Again, case in point, Asus Transformer T100 charger: [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/271922569141?lpid=122&chn=ps&...](http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/271922569141?lpid=122&chn=ps&googleloc=9046781&poi=&campaignid=620800750&device=c&adgroupid=27378723426&rlsatarget=pla-181480843746&adtype=pla&crdt=0)

It's marginally larger than a normal phone charger. Side by side, it's only slightly bigger than Apple ipad charger.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, what do tablet chargers have to do with laptop chargers?

Like you said, "case in point", phone and laptop chargers aren't really going to be getting confused. I think the point you made about your mother is very valid, because a QuickCharge supported charger and a typical standard USB charger will look almost identical, not just in connector shape, but also in absolute size. I agree that adding tablet chargers to the mix confuses that even more. I _don 't_ believe that is the case when it comes to laptop chargers vs phone chargers. They are very different in size (both cable and adapter size). They also ship with different products; it's easy to think _phone charger, same shape, same size, they do the same thing_. I don't know if that will hold true when the chargers are less similar.

I would imagine people will understand "small charger, long charge - <USER3> charger, short charge", kinda like they do now, regardless of connector shape. You're right in implying that there is a big difference between tech savvy users and the typical consumer, so maybe I'm completely wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's clear that Apple really does not care one whit about professionals anymore.

Macs and OS X were always great since they combined great style with great function. Connecting 20 dongles is neither great style nor great function.

<comment><USER22> If they didn't care, why would they bother with a survey? Asking 'do you use this feature?' is almost the opposite of saying 'Lol, I'm removing this feature, I don't care if you use it'

<comment><USER21> Who responds to surveys? People who aren't busy.

Most people who buy MacBook Pros already aren't Pros. That's fine but if you then tailor the machine to people who aren't Pros ("most of our customers"), what are the Pros going to buy?

The Mac Pro was aimed at actual Pros. You can see how well that went.

<comment><USER23> The _previous_ slots-and-bays Mac Pro was aimed at pros, generally. The current one is aimed at one specific niche. (I'm not actually sure what that niche is, only that I'm not in it.)

<comment><USER24> I'm kind of convinced the nMP was aimed at medium to large scale graphics video production houses. The kind of place where assets are kept on a SAN, accessed over a 10Gbit Ethernet, and no local storage is used at all.

They basically walked away from the single-user/boutique studio who don't need the complexity and structure of running a large datacenter. It was completely mind-boggling choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Honestly I would be completely fine with just about everyone doing away with the 3.5mm jack but _only if_ there is a good plan to move onto something just as universal like, say, USB-C _AND_ there are already compatible headphones out there for it. Yes it will suck for many who have older headphones but if it truly helps in the miniaturization effort of technology I would be willing to bite the bullet if it's universal.

Wireless right now kinda sucks. I've gone through 5 different pairs of wireless headphones ranging from cheap $30 Amazon ones to fairly expensive $150 ones* and pretty much all of them have connectivity issues regardless of the phone I use even when they're in my pocket. Plus battery life isn't very good. So we need a good, wired solution here.

Now moving it to lightning? Absolutely no way.

* Surprisingly the cheaper the bluetooth headphones the better audio and connectivity I've had. Go figure. My latest $70 LG headphones are MILES above the $150 ones I bought and broke a few years ago (can't even remember the brand at this point).

<comment><USER26> I think most technology is already small enough. I don't really care whether my laptop is a centimeter thick or seven millimeters; phones getting thinner doesn't really help me either. What's the point of making everything thinner? Saving weight is useful, but you quickly hit diminishing returns.

<comment><USER25> You're speaking of the comparisons of yesterday's computer with today's. These are minimal changes that add up. If you looked at computers 8 years ago to today the difference is absolutely astounding. But 1 year ago to today? Underwhelming.

Making things smaller have a lot of benefits.

\- Axing analog components allow for smaller, digital components that can contain more capabilities

\- Lighter weight

\- Typically better battery life / efficiency. You can fit more battery in it and the signals have less to travel.

\- Research / betterment of humankind. The more we can shrink things the better, easier and faster we'll be able to use the same type of technology in smaller devices possibly even ones that embed into your body.

<comment><USER26> You have a point, but when the way to make the devicer smaller is to just leave out useful parts because they're too big, that seems like a step backwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Bluetooth audio is often criticized for inferior quality, but the truth is, many of the people I talk to just have experience with cheap (or older) Bluetooth audio devices - often with inferior hardware _and_ poor audio codecs. I've owned some really bad Bluetooth audio devices in the past, so I can understand the criticism.

Still, I believe Bluetooth audio has come a long way. I personally use a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones almost daily (with aptX on my MBP), and I've had absolutely zero issues with pairing or sound quality for consuming content - music, video, voice, etc. Granted, I don't use them for pro audio, but when I do occasionally need the additional benefits (lossless quality, low latency) for audio recording/mixing, I use what pretty much every other pro audio person uses: an external DAC with wired studio monitor headphones or speakers.

The point is, I believe most people would be happy with decent Bluetooth headphones. Those who wouldn't be happy with Bluetooth are likely to be using external audio hardware already.

<comment><USER28> Here's a concept: things that don't need to be charged. If Apple removes the headphone jacks from their computers I won't be buying their computers anymore.

<comment><USER29> I charge a phone and two tablets, one of them a Kindle Fire. And I charge a watch. The nightstand full of charging things train has left the station for the kinds of customers who will adopt AirPods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> After not having a VGA connector, making MacBooks clumsy for presentations, not having an ethernet connector, making it annoying for anything networking related, killing headphone, SD card and USB-A will turn those laptops into nothing more than iPads with keyboards.

<comment><USER31> Why do we need to be stuck in the 1980's forever?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_connector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_connector)

We wouldn't even have USB-A without Apple. PC manufacturers stuck with PS/2 keyboard connectors for another decade after Apple switched.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port)

According to most, the rate of technology is accelerating. Unfortunately, we want to stick with the same ports forever.

Let's all move to USB-C, for example, and everyone else can buy an adapter.

[https://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Adapter-Reversible-Supported- CB...](https://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Adapter-Reversible-Supported- CB-A1/dp/B00W98IJ0O)

<comment><USER32> > PC manufacturers stuck with PS/2 keyboard connectors for another decade > after Apple switched.

PC manufacturers _still_ sell PCs with PS/2 keyboard connectors. Because once you lay out a thousand bucks for a KVM switch, you're in no hurry to throw it away. Because people still love those mechanical IBM keyboards. Because you can't plug a thumb drive into the keyboard port of a machine at a secure site. And PS/2 to USB converters are full of bugs.

Meanwhile PCs have had USB support since USB has been a standard. Apple "dropped" PS/2 because they never had it -- Macs used ADB. Adopting USB (from Intel et al) was a bid to stay relevant by becoming compatible with PC peripherals.

Dropping ADB (and VGA and RJ45 and so on) are nothing but Apple saving a buck at the expense of the people who still use those things. You can have the new thing without destroying the old thing.

<comment><USER33> _You can have the new thing without destroying the old thing._

OK. So every computer needs to have, at minimum, multiple USB ports, probably at least one type C USB port, a PS/2 port (really at least two PS/2 ports), a serial port, an ethernet jack, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, a VGA port, a DVI port, probably an optical audio port, an HDMI port, a pair of audio ports for stereo out, an SD slot and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone jack.

After all, it's wrong to destroy the old things just because there are new things. So I'm sure you'll get busy right now starting up a company to make computers that come with all of these and they'll sell like hotcakes, right?

<comment><USER32> There are a bunch of PC makers who already do. Take a look at the back of most workstation-class PCs.

About the only thing you're going to have trouble finding is the floppy drive, and that's because they're legitimately defunct. A PS/2 keyboard is just as good as a USB one; a floppy disk on a new PC is a useless anachronism.

<comment><USER33> No, _every_ computer. That includes the laptops.

Also, the floppy drive can't be left out. Remember: we never drop an old thing just because there's a new thing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I _love_ the optical output embedded in the headphone jack. I think it's awesome and extremely useful for playing movies on my older home theater which doesn't have the HDMI switching capability to get DD 5.1 that way. And it's a lot more reliable than trying to 'cast' the video, particularly when the codec may be unsupported by the receiver as well.

<comment><USER35> I gotta be honest, I had no idea there was an optical output in the MBP headphone jack. Been using OS X since 10.3 with almost exclusively MBP's the whole time. Shows how much I use audio stuff. >.<

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Every day I put my MacBook Pro on my desk at work and the plug in, power, two thunderbolt connections, hdmi, usb, and my headphones. Sometimes I use the SD card reader. There isn't a free port on my computer. I would actually really like an extra thunderbolt or USB port. So I'm hoping they don't reduce the port count on these things any more.

<comment><USER37> may i ask what you connect via thunderbolt? I connect the two thunderbolt to two monitors. I might actually connect to three now i think about it cause i still have an HDMI out that is not used

<comment><USER38> I have one constantly connected to an ethernet adapter because my MBP's wifi cuts out randomly throughout the day (which kills all my remote sessions of course).

<comment><USER39> Use mosh for the remote sessions: [https://mosh.org](https://mosh.org)

<comment><USER40> This helps only with laggy connections with the occasional lost packet. Not with hard network drops (not to mention, there is more than just the terminal impacted by hard network drops).

<comment><USER39> No, mosh doesn't work like that. You can turn off the network connection in one of the nodes (both the server and the client) for hours and when they come back you still have your session like it was before the connection dropped.

I do this everyday on the client side (taking my laptop to work, opening the lid and having my session going on), and sometime on the server side as well.

<comment><USER40> Only if keepalive is disabled; in which case regular SSH will work the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> You know your laptop is truly 'Pro' when there are so many ports, you have to google some of them to figure out what they do (Thinkpad).

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't want to get bothered with batteries or similar hassles when I'm using my notebook (as a desktop)

Yes, please let me add another short-life battery powered gizmo to my workflow

I use the old trackpad (with AA batteries), I have no interest in some rechargeable crap that will bother me as much as other (mandatory) battery powered devices

<comment><USER43> That's the case for me as well. I love the old wireless keyboard & trackpad that take the AA batteries, because I can swap them over so quickly, no hours of downtime due to recharging. Same with my Bose QC25 headphones, which last for weeks on a single AAA battery - I just keep a couple of spare AAAs in my backpack, and if I'm travelling it's easy to buy AAA batteries anywhere.

I do have a pair of Bluetooth headphones I use with my TV, but I never use them with my MacBook Pro, I always use the QC25s (and the media control cable would be awesome, if Apple hadn't hard-wired play/pause to only work with iTunes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't get it. They have the Macbook Air and the "Macbook" (12") that target the casual-ish consumer-ish market for people that want a fancy, shiny Facebook machine. So why do they have to dumb down the Macbook Pro. It is used, as the name suggests, by professionals.

</comment><comment><USER45> MBP is most widely used pro audio laptop. Some people I know do simple mixing without plugging an external audio interface, just using built-in audio. It seems that Apple does not care about those people anymore.

<comment><USER44> Mixing via a 3.5mm headphone jack is not "pro audio"

<comment><USER46> It's not a plain analog headphone socket; it has an optical line out as well.

[http://i.imgur.com/V9QbH7I.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/V9QbH7I.jpg) [http://www.apple.com/shop/product/H7048ZM/A/belkin-6-digital...](http://www.apple.com/shop/product/H7048ZM/A/belkin-6-digital- toslink-optical-audio-cable-with-line-out-adapter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dear Apple: I abandoned my unlimited-data-for-life AT&T plan and jumped on Google Fi the last day they were offering phone discounts, just to avoid buying an iPhone 7. Yes, I actually use my SD card slot and my headphone jack. And my USB ports. The retina macbook is as close to perfection as I have ever imagined a laptop could be. Please, stop.

<comment><USER48> I can't concur more. They are taking this in an awful direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "Dear Apple,

Please remove all USB ports, headphone jacks, and other extraneous ports. It's more important to build for a functional ideal of simplistic beauty than for any kind of real world usability.

That is what I really want as an Apple consumer."

/sarcasm

I wonder if there truly exist people like this who are ruining Apple products for the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wish there was a 'almost constantly' option, they by far my most common peripheral.

</comment><comment><USER48> For developers, the MacBook Pro is becoming less and less useful as Apple increasingly configures it for casual and business users. I've been hearing increasing grumbling about all the adapters and dongles you have to buy and carry. The prospect of no 1/8" jack is another step in this direction. I've noticed devs moving increasingly toward the lenovo/linux combo, or equivalent, as a result. I'm not sure if Apple realizes how important it is to their business to have developers choosing their laptops, or the loss when the tide starts pulling away. It's been a difficult line for Apple to walk... between offering what developers want, and what consumers want, but you actually need both for a full functioning ecosystem. They are now beginning to make it all a consumer and business line, and I think they don't realize the importance of the ecosystem. Very worrisome.

</comment><comment><USER51> Scarier is

[http://www.macrumors.com/2016/05/31/macbook-pro-leaked- photo...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/05/31/macbook-pro-leaked-photos-oled- touch-panel/)

"just 4 USB-C ports." That means not a single common USB stick can be inserted in the new MBP without an additional dongle.

<comment><USER25> While true USB-C is slowly becoming the standard connector so, eventually, there will be plenty of USB-C sticks until you no longer see USB-A at all. The dongle would be annoying but I would at least feel like it's moving in the right, universal direction [in this case].

<comment><USER52> I am not looking forward to it. I just looked around my office, and there are 55 USB ports within arm's reach. (both host and target ports.) I will never ever get around to replacing all those devices with USB-C, so I'll be carrying USB-C dongles for a decade.

<comment><USER25> Standardizing on a single port will eliminate a lot of issues like this but the transition is never very easy. But you likely won't need dongles. Just like today where you can buy USB-C to USB-C you can also buy USB-A to USB-A. Likely we'll just have many cables like that. The only exception would be something like connecting 3.5mm to USB-C. But as devices keep moving towards USB-C you'll need fewer, different cords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Headphone jack very useful. I use it everyday.

</comment><comment><USER54> Ports I've used:

* Thunderbolt * USB * HDMI

That's it! All my music is on my iPhone so I never listen to music on my MPB so I've never used the audio jack. Having said that, unlike the iPhone, I don't really see what's to be gained by removing the audio jack. Especially as some folks have pointed out they use the digital optical out to go into a DAC and then into their headphones. That's not how I work but having the audio jack there to support them for that doesn't hurt me any. In fact I would argue that's the case for all the ports I don't use: it's a PRO machine. It needs to be able to handle all kinds of diverse scenarios not applying to me. Let the MBA be the razor-thin, portless machine and leave the MBP alone.

</comment><comment><USER55> For phones, I'm an Android user but for laptops, I've loved MacBook Pro's (and personally bought three of them other than the work provided ones) for the last 10 years at least for their premier hardware and solid, Unix based OS. In between, I've taken a cursory look at premier chromebooks or ubuntu based laptops as possible replacements but have found them short on one pretext or another. But if the minimalism fundamentalists from Apple win out and start stealing required ports (and Yes, I need the mini port, the HDMI port _and_ the SDCard slot ... along with USB), I'm gone. No more macbooks for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm using an MBP I recovered from a wine spill. It also has a headphone jack broken off in the headphone socket. I'm currently using a bluetooth receiver connected to my audio source switch to connect it. It's not an ideal solution because the audio management in OS X appears to not want to reconnect to Bluetooth audio after sleep, etc. But it will prefer a monitor with HDMI over the internal speakers. I'm not sure why, and I don't know how to change it so that it reconnects to and prefers a Bluetooth audio device. So, for now, I'll be connecting the audio-out on the monitor to my source switch.

</comment><comment><USER56> For unhappy reasons, I feel like at least a minor expert on the lack of audio jacks: I bought a Note 4 a little over two years ago and mine was part of a batch they sold without an audio jack; these is a bolt in the hole. Verizon quickly stopped selling the jack-less Note 4. My wife's, which she bought after mine has an audio jack.

So, I have over two years experience of a phone without and audio jack. It sucks. I dislike using Bluetooth headphones.

I also use audio jacks on my laptops.

This seems like a profit thing for Apple, selling their own expensive wireless headphones.

</comment><comment><USER57> I listen to music on my Mac using bluetooth headphones, but I still leave a pair of ordinary wired headphones plugged in just in case the bluetooth pair aren't connected for some reason, otherwise the sound will play over the built-in speakers by default. I'd be happy to give up the headphone jack but only on the proviso that I have complete control over what happens in situations where the headphones aren't there.

<comment><USER58> I'm sure I remember there being different volume settings for speaker vs headphones. If there's anything playing out of the speakers, it's at the volume you had used it last, before you plugged in your headphones, no?

<comment><USER59> Yep, it's possible to set different volumes for all sound output devices connected to the Mac (including the built-in speakers) in _System Preferences → Sound → Output_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I use the headphone port on my rMBP (2013) daily. Frequently use it at the same time as both USB ports and the mag-safe charging port. HDMI port used often enough that I wouldn't buy a laptop without one. I've never used either Thunderbolt port and would actually prefer to swap those out for more USB ports.

[edit: Thunderbolt, not lightning. See, I never use it.]

</comment><comment><USER61> I feel like Apple has been sending me signals for years that I'm not their target demographic.

I don't see myself buying another mbp ever again.

</comment><comment><USER62> Why would apple even need to ask these questions. I'd assume they'd have software which phones home usage information.

</comment><comment><USER63> I wish they would refresh the product line soon. I need to replace a laptop, but I refuse to pay the Apple premium for old products.

If you look at Macrumor's buyers guide, it's all over due except for the Macbook. ([http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac](http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac))

Days since refresh:

149 - <USER4>

338 - <USER5>

485 - <USER6>

556 - MB Air

700 - <USER7>

1001 - Mac Pro

</comment><comment> some-guy I'm a weird use case: I don't use the audio jack on my Macbook Pro. As someone who still relishes their 10-year-old Apogee Duet audio interface on their 2015 Macbook Pro (Firewire 400 -> Firewire 800 -> Thunderbolt), I wonder if I can convert Thunderbolt now to USB-C? :)

<comment><USER64> Thunderbolt 3 is rolled into the USB-C connector. So now USB-C will carry PCIe and USB 3...

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/thunderbolt/thunde...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/thunderbolt/thunderbolt- technology-consumer.html)

So yes, "USB-C" will run your Firewire 800 ;-)

<comment> some-guy Good to know! I guess I have another 10 years with this thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> > "Do you ever use the headphone port on your MacBook Pro with Retina > display?"

Interesting - I thought they would know that anyway, as OS X should realize when I plug in a headphone.

If Apple's vision is a world without wires, I'm all for it given the mess of wires on my desk.

<comment><USER66> It's only displacement of wires, though. You'll need more wires to charge all your wireless devices.

For example, I still use a wired mouse because it never stops working. I use wired headphones with my work laptop and home desktop because I never have to hear those fatal words "Battery Low!" just when I want to settle in and focus on something for the next few hours.

<comment><USER67> Wireless chargers.

<comment><USER68> More like charger mouse pad. Does not help with Bluetooth headphones, you'd need a wired charging headband or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I don't see HDMI on that list.

<comment><USER70> It's okay, they'll make a $9 dongle for that.

<comment><USER71> They actually don't even bother to sell first party display port adapters for HDMI: you have to get a third party adapter.

<comment><USER58> in some ways, that's a good thing - third party accessories are usually a bit more reasonably priced.

<comment><USER71> That doesn't make any sense, because the existence of Apple selling an adapter doesn't mean you have to buy theirs: them not selling a first party adapter can thereby only be a bad thing (and in fact it is a pretty horrible thing as all the third party adapters are crap :/ the Apple adapters tend to last forever, while the third party HDMI ones I am forced to buy tend to literally crack into pieces after a rather short period of usage). But like: the point is that Apple doesn't always go "yay, an opportunity to make money on an adapter", as one of the most common adapters I see in the wild (to plug all but the largest MacBook into most modern projectors) is one Apple doesn't even bother selling.

<comment><USER72> I was about to call you on this but checking the store it seems you're right, they're reselling another adapter, not an apple branded.

However, I do disagree on the quality of third party adapters; there are many fine ones out there, and the cheap mini-dispay to HDMI I bought last time I was in the US works picture perfect. I think it was PNY but not at home so don't remember.

Not to say all are good, but there are quite a few good adapters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I suspect the survey is just to show that they supposedly polled the community. It seems any decisions this big would have been resolved quite a while ago in order to be able to ship when it seems they will.

</comment><comment><USER73> To analyze and understand Apple's move (and it's not just Apple, they are probably the one people complain the most about because they tend to have a far smaller product range being used by a higher number of people), one must think 5-10 years ahead.

By getting rid of all these different ports, they are making their product simpler, while still capable of interacting with devices that use them (via dongles). This means they have to build less into them making them also lighter, more portable and requiring a standard way to connect other devices.

Dongles are a pain. Yes they are. But also one can argue that in a lot of situations, maybe the majority, if you are in need to use external devices, you're probably in a situation where your laptop is on the top of a desk, in which case maybe even using some kind of a HUB makes more sense (this applies both for home, office and meeting rooms).

So why aren't they doing this in 5-10 years time? Well, because by doing this (Apple and others), they'll speed things up. They'll create more need for devices compatible with USB-C, which means companies will start making peripherals for that market.

However, think by now we've all understood that Apple is aiming for a wireless future. The last compact camera I bought mid-2015 already had Wi-Fi. Headphones are moving wireless (hopefully in a safe way, since there is a reasonable concern about the health effects). Wireless peripherals already exist. The reason why they still have USB-C is probably mostly because of charging, with the nice side effect of keeping other devices able to connect via a simple dongle (rather than a wireless HUB).

I'm also not a fan of wireless keyboards and mice. Mostly because of the hassle of managing batteries/running out of juice and not finding other batteries. A good move from Apple would be to solve that problem: wireless charging becoming the norm instead of an expensive add-on, with longer lasting batteries, with the dream being on-the-fly wireless power feeding.

tl;dr - Apple wants to make things simpler, lighter, more portable and they are not afraid of putting the weight of their whole range of products behind it and taking the plunge. There will be some pain. We'll hopefully end up with a better experience after the transition period.

<comment><USER74> > Headphones are moving wireless (hopefully in a safe way, since there is a > reasonable concern about the health effects)

Do tell more about these "reasonable concerns about the health effects" of wireless... ?

<comment><USER75> I thought the genuine concern about headphones was many people using them at far too high a volume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I use the headphone jack fairly often, but I'm fine with them removing it. I seem to buy new semi-expensive headphones every other year, and if my next purchase must be a pair of wireless ones, so be it.

I don't get all the angst over this. If you have a set of wired headphones that are irreplaceable to you, get an adapter. If not, get a set of new ones.

<comment><USER77> > I seem to buy new semi-expensive headphones every other year

Why? Good headphones last tens of years.

The alternative to a headphone jack is not wireless. Bluetooth audio and having more unnecessary batteries to charge suck. The alternative is a USB DAC + amp you can use with any standard pair of headphones.

<comment><USER78> Cable wear, probably. I've replaced the cable in my AKG k702s four times since I bought them in march 2014. So about twice a year.

<comment><USER68> You know, you could just pay a technician 20 bucks, a good headphone cable (whatever Sennheiser uses in top lines) and get it replaced. It is quite easy.

<comment><USER78> Yeah, I replace cables (the AKGs are detachable, which is nice, but for my ATH m50s I just soldered them on myself). But many people can't be bothered

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Survey me about the damn screen. Make it less prone to scratching.

<comment><USER79> How does anything ever come into contact with a laptop screen to scratch it?

<comment><USER22> The gap between the surface of the screen and the bottom of the laptop is so tiny that when you close the lid, any dust particle, even so small you can barely see them, gets squashed against the screen. When you leave the laptop charging for a while, static seems to build up on the screen, and it attracts dust particles.

You can tell this is not an incidental thing if you examine the surface of a 2 year old screen. Even if you don't have visible scratches, you can see the contours of the trackpad on the screen, where the gap is a fraction of an inch wider, and the screen stays more pristine.

<comment><USER80> > You can tell this is not an incidental thing if you examine the surface of a > 2 year old screen

I'm looking at a 6 year old screen, a 3 year old screen, and a year old screen right now - no scratches on any of them, and I don't do anything special to aka scare of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> I rarely use the headphone ports on any device now. Wireless bluetooth headphones with active noise cancelling are one of the best tech-purchases I've made. Would never go back.

<comment><USER82> If you don't mind crappy audio (music that skips, plays fast/slow depending on interference, etc) and terrible recording (handsfree car-like 8bit audio), Bluetooth is fine.

<comment><USER83> And having to charge all the things all the time.

<comment><USER46> And latency which makes monitoring live audio (e.g. playing a guitar through an effects processing app) unusable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Is the purpose of this survey schadenfreude?

</comment><comment><USER84> There is an excuse for the removal of jack rolled out by a lot of people: "Apple has data on jack usage, they know what they are doing"

Clearly they do not have data on it...

<comment><USER85> How does this prove that they don't have data? All it says is that they are seeking more data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> <sarcasm>iPad sales are falling so Apple thinks the way to solve that is by making the MacBook more iPad like so that people don't feel temped to choose one over the other.</sarcasm></comment>


2007 Crunchies: The Winners - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/18/2007-crunchies-the-winners/

<comment><USER2> Getting Dugg is a badge of Honor?

Thats suprising.</comment>